Senegal has formally joined the Artemis Accords, changing into the 56th nation and the fourth African nation to decide to a shared imaginative and prescient for peaceable and clear area exploration.
The signing ceremony was held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday (July 24), the place Maram Kairé, Director-General of the Senegalese Space Study Agency (ASES), signed the Artemis Accords alongside Senegal’s Ambassador to the United States, Abdoul Wahab Haidara. NASA Chief of Staff Brian Hughes and State Department official Jonathan Pratt represented the U.S.
“Following a meeting between Senegal President Faye and President Trump, today, NASA built upon the strong relations between our two nations as the Senegalese Agency for Space Studies signed the Artemis Accords,” Sean Duffy, appearing NASA Administrator, mentioned in a statement from the area company. “With Senegal as the 56th signatory, I am proud to further President Trump’s strong legacy of global cooperation in space.”
The Artemis Accords, established in October 2020 by the United States and 7 different founding nations, set guiding rules to manipulate civil area exercise, emphasizing peaceable use, transparency and preservation of lunar sources. They align with the tenets of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and are designed to help NASA’s Artemis program, which goals to return people to the moon by 2026 and put together for future crewed missions to Mars.
Senegal is the newest African nation to signal, following Angola in 2023 and Nigeria and Rwanda in 2022. Though Senegal’s area program remains to be in its early levels, having shaped in 2023, the nation launched its first nanosatellite, Gaindesat-1A, in 2024 to assist in agricultural planning and environmental monitoring.
“Senegal’s adherence to the Artemis Accords reflects our commitment to a multilateral, responsible, and transparent approach to space,” Kairé mentioned within the assertion. “This signature marks a meaningful step in our space diplomacy and in our ambition to contribute to the peaceful exploration of outer space.”
Senegal has been steadily increasing its involvement in area science, together with supporting NASA missions via ground-based observations of asteroid and planetary occultations. In 2021, NASA partnered with Kairé and native scientists to trace asteroid Orus because it handed in entrance of a star, serving to estimate its measurement and form forward of the Lucy spacecraft’s deliberate flyby in 2028.
The rising listing of Artemis Accords signatories underscores growing world consensus on the necessity for accountable and collaborative exploration past Earth, in addition to making certain that the way forward for area advantages all of humanity.